China Cabinet Redo with Chalk Paint

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Last updated 1/24/2018

I dragged Mike out garage saleing and we only made it to one sale! We found someone unloading some vintage furniture and artwork and we lucked out. If you are a garage saler then you know how long it can take to find something good. We found this china cabinet at that garage sale and thought it would be perfect to hold our glassware overflow. The only issue was the finish was super dated but we knew it would be a great candidate for a painted furniture makeover.

Here is the before picture in all it’s glory. It was so dark and outdated looking but the detail was fantastic. Plus the price was right! This cabinet would have been way out of our price range if we bought it new in the store.

Mike started by cleaning the whole piece off with some degreaser to get all the vintage grime off the piece. Then re removed what hardware he could.

He started by painting the inside with two coats of Annie Sloane chalk paint in Old White using an angled brush. After that dried he painted the outside with Annie Sloane French Linen. The paint went pretty far for such a big piece and we had a lot leftover.

He finished the piece off with Annie Sloane clear wax. He wiped it on with a rag. Then buffed it off with another rag. This was our first time using this finish so we didn’t bother with a fancy wax brush.

Then he wiped on Rub ‘n Buff to redo the original handles and make the decorative elements stand out more. This stuff is great to update a piece when you can’t remove the hardware.

This was the first project Mike has done with chalk paint. It’s pretty popular right now so he wanted to try it out. We were lucky enough to find a shop that sells it locally because it’s not available at Lowes or Home Depot. You can also find it on Amazon. The benefit of this paint is that it doesn’t require any sanding (if your piece is in good shape.) It is on the pricey side but a little bit goes a long way. One quart can paint several pieces of furniture. Like I mentioned, we still had some left from this project.

To stretch out the paint a little further Mike mixed it with a little bit of water to make a more watery consistency. It took him two coats but he didn’t use very much of the paint up to achieve this look. All in all it was a success using this new method and I’ll have some more projects with chalk paint in the future.

I love how much more modern the cabinet looks with a fresh coat of paint and I especially love the light color inside the cabinet to make our glassware stand out more. We fit everything from our old china cabinet in here plus more and we have some room to spare. Plus it’s super sturdy so it will last us for a long time.